I agree. For me Gore is not the best representative for the latest science in this area. Instead I would turn to this new group of scientist who want to keep the facts clear according to Oppenheimer: “I think it is important for scientists to assure that the public and policy makers have a clear view of what scientific findings are and what the implications of those findings are,” said Princeton University scientist Michael Oppenheimer. “To the extent that some members of the new majority in the House have exhibited a contrarianism to science, I think it is a good way to have a scientific community there to help keep its facts clear.”

@RV: You provided a quote from a "new group of scientist who want to keep the facts clear." Look at what you quoted from him - he's making a political statement! Don't you get that? Don't you see the problem?

It is such bullshit. Our weather really is not that out of control. It has periodic fluxes, but that has always been the case. One day we will have another ice age. One day the pole ice caps will likely melt. But I doubt either will come in the next 1000 years. And if they do, we will find we have little to do with it.

But because over long times and large distances the instabilities work themselves out, there IS such a thing as climate and it CAN be modeled.

That doesn't mean it's been done successfully yet despite claims to the contrary and a heavily politicized process.

And yet we can put probes on Mars.

Sometimes we get there...sometimes we don't. Besides, my limited understanding of the physics involved seems to recall that we understand the orbital mechanics of the solar system far better than our own, much more complex, terrestrial climate.

@Scott M:Besides, my limited understanding of the physics involved seems to recall that we understand the orbital mechanics of the solar system far better than our own, much more complex, terrestrial climate.

Climate is complex, but the physics which governs it is very simple. A primer from American Institute of Physics may be found here:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

Long but well worth your time: read what is there, compare to the FUD spread here, and draw your own conclusions.

As a libertarian I think it is wrong for the government to ban smoking in privately-owned businesses, and I think it was wrong for the states to rape the tobacco companies in the 90s.

But, in arguing against those policies, how seriously could I be taken if I argued that smoking doesn't cause any health problems and all the science showing it does is faked by commmunists to further their leftists agenda? (I am loosely paraphrasing shouting thomas--check his comment before you accuse me of erecting a straw man).

I don't want to see top-down useless nonsense like the lightbulb ban, but people spreading misinformation and denialism make it that much harder to propose market-based alternatives.

The Hell cycle ended on August 16, 1987; the Harmonic Convergence began on August 17. Thus began the projected twenty-five year culmination of the 5,125 year Great Cycle of History, as well as the 26,000-year cycle of evolution, both slated to end in 2012.

WTF? Also, why are all new age websites so goofy looking? Is their a goofy new age website template out there? Ugh.

It's complex because of feedback, not because of countless variables. There are countless variables in the moleclues of air, yet you can predict with certainty how to blow up a balloon, can't you?

You don't know what's going to happen and neither does anyone else.

More FUD. "If we don;t know everything it's the same as knowing nothing"--that's your argument.

There are countless variables in how people drive--personalities, their equipment, their habits and schecules--and yet you understand the traffic patterns in your hometown pretty well. How is that possible without knowing what every single driver's intentions and abilities are exactly?

But, in arguing against those policies, how seriously could I be taken if I argued that smoking doesn't cause any health problems and all the science showing it does is faked by commmunists to further their leftists agenda?

The two aren't related. Smoking is a legal activity. The government stepping in to make that activity illegal in private establishments without making the activity illegal is a horse of a different color than making the argument based on health reasons.

There are countless variables in the moleclues of air, yet you can predict with certainty how to blow up a balloon, can't you?

Gabe, I normally have a very healthy respect for your comments hereabouts, but you seem to have left your A-game somewhere. There are a finite number of feedbacks and variables in climate, but I seriously doubt our current capability to a) collect the data cleanly and b) successfully build the models. We're talking macro here.

Blowing up a balloon involves a very small set of variables that are easily controlled and anticipated. Otherwise most clowns would be out of a job. ManBearPig, on the other hand, has found a way to make clowning profitable (emphasis on profitable) without balloon animals.

There are countless variables in how people drive--personalities, their equipment, their habits and schecules--and yet you understand the traffic patterns in your hometown pretty well. How is that possible without knowing what every single driver's intentions and abilities are exactly?

Thanks for proving my point. You must not actually commute right? Traffic patterns are NEVER exactly the same, and some days are significantly different than others. And they can't be predicted!

@MarkG:Traffic patterns are NEVER exactly the same, and some days are significantly different than others. And they can't be predicted!

So, you never avoid certain routes or intersections at certain times of day when you are in a hurry, right? And "rush hour" doesn't exist?

I never claimed they could be predicted EXACTLY, down to the minute and the license plates of the cars and where they will be found at what second. But the trends are obvious, and every human being who drives knows this, and there's no point in being disingenuous about it.

Al Gore's understanding of climate science starts with his belief that man has a negative impact on the environment. The problem is that while the latter is undoubtably true, its far from certain what that has to do with climate. What is certain is that he has made a lot of money and created a massive carbon footprint.

I am open to legitimate scientific debate, but I'm not stupid enough to buy into his religion

@Scott M:The two aren't related. Smoking is a legal activity. The government stepping in to make that activity illegal in private establishments without making the activity illegal is a horse of a different color than making the argument based on health reasons.

But the laws and the lawsuits WERE based on health-related arguments--that it's unsafe for people to be exposed to smoke at work, and that smokers' health problems are driving up the cost of medical care and so the tobacco companies need to pay for that.

There are a finite number of feedbacks and variables in climate, but I seriously doubt our current capability to a) collect the data cleanly and b) successfully build the models.

On what is your doubt based? What level of accuracy do you demand and why isn't the current accuracy good enough?

Is it too much to ask that you read what I linked to? Isn't this argument too important to rely on sound bites or comments on a blog?

Blowing up a balloon involves a very small set of variables that are easily controlled and anticipated.

6.0 * 10^23 moleecule, give or take, of varying masses and speeds which are not known exactly. How can such a complicated system boil down, as you claim, to "a few variables". (These variables of course are P, V, n, and T.)

You know, from experience, that in this case they DO boil down to a few variables. Yet you are willing to declare that the climate cannot possibly--based on what?

You said it was long and it appeared to be when I clicked on the link. I have neither the time nor the inclination to dive into something like that here at work. Such a thing is resigned to quite evenings at home, I'm afraid. Truly absorbing something like that requires a bit more attention than I can reasonably give it until tonight.

Yet you are willing to declare that the climate cannot possibly--based on what?

Show me where I said it cannot possibly be anything. I said I doubted our current ability to both collect the data cleanly and model it correctly. Will those two things become possible? I should certainly hope so.

Yes, Gabriel, it can be modeled. But none of the models designed so far come anywhere close to incorporating all the data that is available, a significant portion of the data that is available is corrupt for one reason or another, and there isn't enough data from a long enough period to be able to come anywhere close to figuring out what inputs cause what effect on the weather/climate.

The single biggest problem with climate science is that we know the base data is almost complete bullshit. Temperature data is not only inconsistant historically, but much of the original data has been lost--what we mostly see is the "adjusted" data, but we aren't told what the adjustements were. Then there is the proxy data which turns out out to be extremely innacurate. Oddly some of the concrete data we do have, such as actual measurements of atmospheric CO2 back to the early 19th century, is ignored (since it doesn't support the hysterical hypothesis.)

All that aside, what gets me the most is the shear hubris of the Al Gores in the world that they know the solution. Nature has repeatedly shown that man cannot control it.

But none of the models designed so far come anywhere close to incorporating all the data that is available,

How do you know how much data they need to incorporate?

We don't know where every grain of dust and piece of gravel in the solar system is, yet we can predict eclipses accurately to the second for hundreds of years in the future. How can they do that when they don't have all the data?

How much more accurate would predictions be if they used 90% of the avlaibale data, or 99%, or 99.9%--and would the extra effort be worth the accuracy?

How do we know we are in a recession if we don't know the status of every human being's employment, bank account, investments, and income to the penny?

There has never been a time inm science when ALL the data was needed to draw a conclusion. This is another iteration of "not knowing everything is the same as knowing nothing".

For an non-scientist commie's take on the issue, I would recommend a paper by a lawyer Jason Scott Johnston, who cross examines the IPCC's claims with peer-reviewed articles that call into question several assumptions of the narrative. But even he admits there is a warming trend, but the question is can we measure all the feedbacks in the system and he writes" ... with the debate coming down to conflictingviews about the reliability of alternative datasets on solar activity. Perhaps even moreimportantly, a growing body of sophisticated theoretical work confirms that the nonlinearglobal climate is subject to inherent warm and cool cycles of about 20 to 30 yearsin duration, with substantial evidence that a warm cycle was likely to have begun in1976. As for the latitudinal pattern of twentieth century warming, with more pronouncedwarming in the Arctic in particular, there is now substantial evidence establishing that atleast one half of such warming was due to the deposition of industrial era soot on thesnows and ice of that region.-- and where does the soot come from?

Gabriel,1) The existing data, at least as entered into the models, has been shown to be inaccurate.

2) The models don't utilize all existing data.

3) There is a great deal of related variables that aren't incorporated into the models at this point.

4) The existing models have shown themselves to be extremely poor in making predictions.

Right now those of you trying to predict the future climates, and trying to determine what controllable variables will have the greatest impact on the future climates, and what steps can be taken by mankind to adjust those variables, are stuck in a loop of steps 1, 2, and 3 above. They may not be arranged in that particular order. But until all three of those are changed appropriately, 4) is a guaranteed result.

there are some newer statistical techniques, not notably covarience structural modelling, that can handle the number of variables--as always, the utility of this technique depends totally on the validity of the variables--and the ultimate test of the modelling depends, of course, on its ability to predict. When that happens i will pay attention--

AGW is a consensus of most climate scientists, but claims about the increase of deadly weather certainly is not. See judithcurry.com, as she (a well-known believer in AGW, not a skeptic) frequently posts her distress at how this issue is proceeding without the science.

Anybody who compares the complexity of sending a spacecraft to Mars at one particular instant in time (where we know the current and, for all practical purposes, future positions of all the planets, the sun, the pertinent asteroids, etc.) with the future of the climate decades from now has no fundamental understanding of physics. The laws of orbital motion of large bodies are not chaotic. The law of gravity is not chaotic. The concept of the conservation of energy and momentum is not chaotic. Even the slight shifts rendered by the laws of relativity are well-understood and factored into any mission when determining an orbit (if they were chaotic, we wouldn't be able to accurately predict and compensate for their very tiny effects).

Compared to that, climate science is a joke. You don't get to Mars based on statistics and proxies (hmmm, where is Mars likely to be in 2 months?), you get there with hard science and equations. Climate science, by comparison, is a shot-in-the-dark guess based on incomplete and frequently inaccurate statistical information fed into models that are infintely more complex and fallible than any orbital calculation. Seriously, if planetary science were anything like climate science we would never have left the planet (and there'd be no weather satellites, GPS, moon landings, Voyager probes or anything else outside our atmosphere).

Gabriel Hanna wrote:Al Gore is abusing legitimate science for his own ends, but the science is legitimate nonetheless.

From the sublime to the ridiculous in one sentence, that's a rhetorical accomplishment of note though a dubious one. CO2 as a temperature forcing agent in general and AGW in particular have been debunked by actual observation.

Nobody is happier than Tipper Gore. Imagine the burden that was lifted off of that women's shoulders when she decided the climate and atmosphere would be better anywhere else than next to that blower of hot air.

yet we can predict eclipses accurately to the second for hundreds of years in the future.

Let me know when the climate change people predict anything that accurately hundreds of years in the future. That means we’ll have to wait for a few hundred years, though. You guys are ok with that, right?

"How much more accurate would predictions be if they used 90% of the avlaibale data, or 99%, or 99.9%--and would the extra effort be worth the accuracy?"

You've answered your own question - and the answer is "We don't know." That's the problem.

That is completely untrue in calculating a transit to Mars. We might not know the position of every grain of sand or dust, but we also know it DOESN'T MATTER. When calculating a large spacecraft's path it is irrelevant. We can prove that with equations and we can prove that with experience. You can't do the same with climate science.

False. I linked to some of the original data, and not only that, have held the hardback volumes in my hands, as anyone who wishes can do at any large university library.

This is why the word "denialist" gets used. While it may be unfailry used to denigrate anyone who is skeptical, in YOUR case it is appropriate--you are denying that something exists, which it unambiguously does.

@kcom:You can't do the same with climate science.

But you offer nothing with which to back this contention. How do you know? What calculations have you done to show that this is or is not the case?

Once again, the "if we don't know everything we might as well klnow nothing" argument adapted from creationism.

Nobody is even sure what the data set is. Evidence is that the raw data was adjusted immediately and both the raw data and what methods were used for that adjustment were lost. Even Phil Jones has stated that GISS data was corrupt.

Ironically, Jones has also admitted losing the original raw data which they used. (Not only that, they have no documentation of how the raw data was adjusted.)

The bottom line is that for all the published data sets from the mid to late twentieth century, we do not know the provenance. There is a very serious question as to whether we have any accurate raw data for that time period. I believe the overwhelming evidence is that we do not.

(We KNOW that the HO-83 Hygro-Thermometers introduced in the 80s had a serious [non-linear] flaw that could lead to measurments being off by up to 3 degrees! The error isn't linear nor consistant except that the maximum temperatures were off by a much higher amount than the minimum temperatures. Once this was learned, how much raw data was simply adjusted immediately, how much was adjusted later and how much left alone. We don't know.

That aside, that the method of measuring the temperature at a given site was changed puts even "accurate" measurements into question. Add to that that the stations themselves were often moved and/or things such as pavement added next to them gives them a margin of error in excess of the claimed warming (or cooling.)

Data from the 19th century will show an increase of temperature since the norther hemisphere was emerging from the mini-ice-age and the Tambora event.)

I am against all of them. I have little success arguing with people who are for them, thanks to the perception that if I am against them I must also believe all the misinformation that is spread in the comments here.

Gus Grissom: Wait a minute, wait a minute! [turns Glenn toward him] Youve got it all wrong, the issue here aint pussy. The issue here is monkey.John Glenn: What?Gus Grissom: Us. We are the monkey.Deke Slayton: What Gus is saying is that were missing the point.

What Gabe is saying is that it's possible that Al Gore is a crapweasel and yet there could still be some climate trend worth planning around. The planning doesn't have to be central planning. But maybe some people in Miami would like to know whether they should start thinking about building a seawall along their city's shoreline, or maybe some buisnessmen might be interested in the possible profits from developing cheaper methods for desalinization of seawater.

Or, since the future is inherently uncertain, we can all just Live for Today, like those fuckin' hippies back in the Haight.

Here is the test I'd like to see a climate model pass before I'd make any significant steps to society:

1) The climate model can take into account any scientific formulas, laws and constants that the modelers think are relevant. It may also use any climate data recorded before the year 2000 for calculating statistical relationships used in the model. They can also include unusual events, such as volcanic eruptions, that are not caused by climate but can effect it.2) The modelers may run their simulations up until the year 2000, tweaking variables as they see fit to get the best model they are capable of producing.3) Once they believe they have the model correct, they announce a public demonstration. The demonstration consists of two parts. First, they model the climate from 2000 to the present, to see how well their model tracks reality. Once they start this demonstration, they may not tweak any variable to get the results to match reality. I'm not sure how close the results have to be to the actual measured temperature to pass the test, this would have to be decided before the test starts. The second part of the test is to model from the year 1900 to 2100, assuming CO2 levels remaining constant at their 1900 levels. In this case, the test is to make sure that the model does not predict run-away warming or cooling over the long term*.If the model passes this test then I'd be happy to listen to their predictions for the next 100 years. If not, the modelers need to go away and leave the rest of us alone for at least a decade. Leaving the rest of us alone include no government funding.

*Note regarding the second test: it is possible that we are at a point where the climate really would have long-term heating or cooling with constant CO2 levels. We've gone into and out of ice ages before. Thus failing this test does not prove that the model is wrong. It does, however, prove that CO2 is not what we should be worrying about.

Gabriel," I linked to some of the original data"Are you really this obtuse, or are you just playing games?

Some. Some. Some.

Let's say you went to the doctor, and they ran some tests. He/she said that "Gabriel, here is the test data. We know some of it is accurate, and we know that some of it is corrupted because the lab equipment wasn't properly calibrated. Unfortunately, we don't know which is the good data, and which is the bad data. But based on the test results, it looks like you need to have one of your kidneys removed. Right now. There isn't time to recalibrate the equipment and redo the tests." I'm sure that you would sign the release form and let them start cutting, right?

They already did those things you demand of them now: Hansen's predictions were published almost thirty years ago and they match today's climate pretty well. they already jumpred through your hoops years ago, but it's never good enough--and of course no "skeptics" do any modelling, and they do not make ANY predictions--yet you invariably prefer them, it seems.

In the original 1988 paper, three different scenarios were used A, B, and C. They consisted of hypothesised future concentrations of the main greenhouse gases – CO2, CH4, CFCs etc. together with a few scattered volcanic eruptions. The details varied for each scenario, but the net effect of all the changes was that Scenario A assumed exponential growth in forcings, Scenario B was roughly a linear increase in forcings, and Scenario C was similar to B, but had close to constant forcings from 2000 onwards. Scenario B and C had an ‘El Chichon’ sized volcanic eruption in 1995. Essentially, a high, middle and low estimate were chosen to bracket the set of possibilities. Hansen specifically stated that he thought the middle scenario (B) the “most plausible”.

These experiments were started from a control run with 1959 conditions and used observed greenhouse gas forcings up until 1984, and projections subsequently (NB. Scenario A had a slightly larger ‘observed’ forcing change to account for a small uncertainty in the minor CFCs). It should also be noted that these experiments were single realisations...

Scenario B is pretty close and certainly well within the error estimates of the real world changes. And if you factor in the 5 to 10% overestimate of the forcings in a simple way, Scenario B would be right in the middle of the observed trends. It is certainly close enough to provide confidence that the model is capable of matching the global mean temperature rise!

But can we say that this proves the model is correct? Not quite. Look at the difference between Scenario B and C. Despite the large difference in forcings in the later years, the long term trend over that same period is similar. The implication is that over a short period, the weather noise can mask significant differences in the forced component. This version of the model had a climate sensitivity was around 4 deg C for a doubling of CO2. This is a little higher than what would be our best guess (~3 deg C) based on observations, but is within the standard range (2 to 4.5 deg C). Is this 20 year trend sufficient to determine whether the model sensitivity was too high? No. Given the noise level, a trend 75% as large, would still be within the error bars of the observation (i.e. 0.18+/-0.05), assuming the transient trend would scale linearly. Maybe with another 10 years of data, this distinction will be possible. However, a model with a very low sensitivity, say 1 deg C, would have fallen well below the observed trends.

Hansen stated that this comparison was not sufficient for a ‘precise assessment’ of the model simulations and he is of course correct. However, that does not imply that no assessment can be made, or that stated errors in the projections (themselves erroneous) of 100 to 400% can’t be challenged. My assessment is that the model results were as consistent with the real world over this period as could possibly be expected and are therefore a useful demonstration of the model’s consistency with the real world. Thus when asked whether any climate model forecasts ahead of time have proven accurate, this comes as close as you get.

@exhelodrv1:Let's say you went to the doctor, and they ran some tests.

Where your analogy fails is that the people who want to remove the kidney are not the people who did the lab tests--they are chiropractors. There are a number of specialists who recommend different things based on the same information.

Meanwhile, there's a bunch of homeopaths claiming that medicine is a liberal scam and I can cure all that ails me by drinking pure water that has been treated with magic rituals.

Gabriel... Why has the best the warmists scientists have been able to speculate in order to to explain no increase in temps for 10 years followed by a decrease in temps for 3 years ( While co2 was rising continuously) a theory that more Chinese coal power plants put more soot clouds into the air?

So it's the clouds.

The space shuttle launch just proved one more time that there is no glass box between outer space and the earth's atmosphere.

Gabriel Hanna wrote:How do you know how much data they need to incorporate?

How indeed? And how do you know the data they do incorporate is enough to be predictive? Every model built so far has not exhibited reliable predictive power in the short term, nor have they demonstrated the ability to reproduce historical climate. When run backwards they all create weird ahistorical scenarios, such as the desertification of Ireland.

Yes, Newtonian mechanics can produce chaotic systems, but our solar system (the Sun and eight or nine planets) is sufficiently stable that for hundreds of years analog computers have been able calculate the relative positions of the major planets an their larger moons with enough accuracy to predict conjunctions, oppositions, eclipses, etc. However, if our solitary primary star had been a binary, or had our system contained a super-giant planet in a tight orbit (such as the case in many known extra-solar systems) then simple computers like the orrery would have been impossible. The atmosphere is however so much more complex that its a wholly different kettle of fish, so to speak, even today our best peta-flop computers can't even approach the problem.

I'm truly surprised that you would invoke the mechanics of spaceflight as argument in support of these dubious models the AGW hacks have foisted on a credulous public. The orbits of Mars and Earth are well understood, seeing as their relative positions have been monitored for thousands of years and their masses and accelerations have been measured with increasing accuracy for hundreds of years, even today the relevant data are sufficiently vague that a purely ballistic flight path between Earth and Mars is unlikely to be successful. Orbital and landing missions to Mars are possible because the spacecraft are controllable and can be made to correct their courses en route. If NASA had to plan flights to Mars based on short-term observations of the kind AGW theory relies on then their missions would have about as likely to succeed as I am likely to win a trifecta on horses I picked based on their color.

"But maybe some people in Miami would like to know whether they should start thinking about building a seawall along their city's shoreline, or maybe some buisnessmen might be interested in the possible profits from developing cheaper methods for desalinization of seawater."

Uh, look, I grew up in Miami, and I can tell you that that city has lived with the worry of being next to the ocean for its entire history, and have long undertaken projects to stave off the inevitable beach erosion that naturally occurs because that area is a fricking sand dune. The ocean washes sand away. It is natural. It occurs no matter the climate. It will happen. It has nothing to do with how many light bulbs people turn on. It has nothing to do with a factory that ran in Victorian England. All these examples of these cities built on the ocean shore that are supposedly in danger because of global warming are already in a precarious position because they are on the ocean shore.

If you would like to know what I believe, it's this: any warming "trend" is natural because for the past several thousand years we have been coming out of the last previous big ice age. Human industrial activity, which has only been around for the past 150 years or so, has very little to do with anything beyond pollution of the immediate surrounding area, and a lot of that has been cleaned up in Europe and North America. (For bad pollution, go to Asia and Africa. Oh, but we can't saddle developing nations with any sort of restrictive sanctions because that would be wrong so let's pretend they don't exist.) Anyway, I don't see that there has been any serious sudden spike in heat and bad weather. I'm sure Al Gore does, because he's a hothouse flower who was raised in a hotel and lives in a bubble built of money. When it rains he probably freaks out.

This is getting too long. I'll just end it by saying we have more important things to worry about than whether or not someone in Miami might lose a foot of their beachfront property to rising seas. Anyone who lives on the ocean in Miami is a millionaire anyway -- they can just go to their chalet in Gstadt.

@Andrea:If you would like to know what I believe, it's this: any warming "trend" is natural because for the past several thousand years we have been coming out of the last previous big ice age.

Calling it "natural" is just giving it a name. If it really is "natural" then you can point to the cause. For example, there are two tides in a day. If you ask me why, and I say "it's a natural cycle", I haven't EXPLAINED anything. If I say that it's caused by the moon, and that's why we have two tides in a day, THEN I have given an explanation.

@Quaestor:If NASA had to plan flights to Mars based on short-term observations of the kind AGW theory relies on then their missions would have about as likely to succeed as I am likely to win a trifecta on horses I picked based on their color.

Where did I say that climate science is as accurate as astronomical prdeictions? Nowhere. My point is that you cannot say that just because there isn't complete data, or the equations are chaotic, or we've only been watching X years, that prediction is impossible.

Climate scientists cannot predict climate with accuracy to the hundredth of a degree; but that;s dones't mean that we all just throw up our hands and say we know nothing about it. Once again it's the old argument: not knowing everything means we might as well know nothing.

Gabriel Hanna said... A graphic comparing the 1988 predictions with todays observations may be found here...

Okay, I looked at the graph. It includes one decade of actual results from when the prediction was made to when the the graph was published. During this decade, the most likely ( scenario B ) diverged from the actual by ~0.2C. Do you consider that good?

I didn't see any evidence that they ran a test based on constant CO2 levels, did you?

@Andrea: Thanks for contributing your expertise on Miami. It's really important to make sure that every single illustrative example conforms to the personal opinions of everyone here.

To restate the point you ignored, there are two distinct issues that relate to climate change: (1) What is the best forecast, and what are its error bounds? (2) What is the most sensible response to that forecast? The fact that you (and I, and Gabriel Hanna) don't think that reverting to subsistence agriculture is a good idea has everything to do with (2) and very little to do with (1).

As for rich Miamians, I'm perfectly happy to let them pay for their own seawall. And I don't have to retreat to a position of "who can know?" in order to arrive at that policy conclusion.

The choice is not between worldwide central planning and steadfast denial that the Earth is warming. Once we untie policy discussion from climate analysis, we'll get better science as well as better policy.

It isn't, but I wasn't given thirty years to develop detailed models of population growth, economic trends, and traffic simulations. If I were, I could do a lot better at predicting the I-95 traffic at 6pm in 25 years.

Which is the whole point. You have people who have spent their entire careers working on the climate models and climate data, and people who know almost nothing about it feel free, for some reason, to say it's obvious they're doing it all wrong.

A plumber didn't go to Harvard, but he knows thousands of things a Harvard grad probably doesn't know--though a Harvard grad COULD problably learn them, IF he put the effort and time in. I for one hold plumbers in high esteem for the knowledge they have aquired and I defer to their opinions on the subject they spent their professional lives on which I concede I know little of: verb. sap.

@Ignorance is Bliss:During this decade, the most likely ( scenario B ) diverged from the actual by ~0.2C. Do you consider that good?

It's within the margin of error of the estimate of the trend. We'd still be having this argument if it were 0.02 C or 0.002 C--i kinow that because that is the magnitude of the "urban heat island" which supposedly makes all the calculations worthless.

+/- 0.2 C is far better than the nothing that the skeptics have put out.

I didn't see any evidence that they ran a test based on constant CO2 levels, did you?

Done years ago, my friend, before you ever heard the phrase "anthropogenic".

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm

they've also done calculations that assume that the sun is the culprit, which do not match the climate trends. They've jumped through hoops you havne't thought of yet.

Fifty years this science has been going on, and from your armchair you think you are going to pull out something they didn't do yet? Good luck.

Where did I say that climate science is as accurate as astronomical prdeictions? Nowhere.

Here it seems that you implied that the orbital mechanics that govern the solar system are as chaotic as those that govern climate, and yet we can master the orbital mechanics, thus we can master climate mechanics.

The equations that govern the solar system are chaotic, did you know that? And yet we can put probes on Mars.

I believe this is where that line of discussion came from. It would seem, and others have pointed out, that the two are worlds apart (pun).

"But you offer nothing with which to back this contention. How do you know? What calculations have you done to show that this is or is not the case?

Once again, the 'if we don't know everything we might as well klnow nothing' argument adapted from creationism."

No, it's the "We know a lot about this and much less about that argument."

We have sent satellites and probes all around the solar system and hit our targets with incredible precision. That's due to our fundamental understanding of the physics of large bodies in motion and the physics of gravity. We understand it so well partly because it's relatively simple. In the simplest system, there are only two bodies interacting. The results of our space program speak for themselves and prove the breadth and depth of our knowledge.

Compare that with climate science. It's way more complex. A two-body climate sysetm would be meaningless, unlike a two-body gravity problem. Climate science can't make precise predictions. It has no track record of making any such predictions and proving them to be true. Where is the climate science equivalent of putting a satellite in orbit around Saturn? It simply doesn't exist because climate science can't do it. It's partly in the nature of the problem and partly that climate science is in its infancy.

I'll turn your statement around and say that you make a grievous mistake in assuming that because we know something, we know enough. That argument is adapted from hubris, and it's rampant in science. By the way, I was trained in science and have no relgious affiliation but it still pains me to see scientists who can't accept the fact that when we don't know something we don't know it. They seem to think that the best knowledge in a particular topic is, by definition, adequate knowledge. It is not. That we have the knowledge to put a spacecraft in orbit around Saturn says nothing about our capacity to understand the climate 50 years from now. In one field we know a lot, in the other field we know much less. It's stupid to pretend that's not so.

Gabriel Hanna wrote:Climate scientists cannot predict climate with accuracy to the hundredth of a degree...

True. And this is where your contention that AGW theory is legitimate science stumbles. The theory tries to predict future climate to an accuracy outside the bounds of precision imposed by the observed data.

@Scott M:Here it seems that you implied that the orbital mechanics that govern the solar system are as chaotic as those that govern climate, and yet we can master the orbital mechanics, thus we can master climate mechanics.

No, that's not what I wrote. Other commenters were saying that we can't predict climate because we don't have all the information, or the equations are chaotic, etc, and I was pointing out that this is false, that the same problems exist with the mechanics of the solar system and with the behavior of gases.

There is nothing I have said that implies that there is a similar level of uncertainty in the results of orbital mechanics and climate science--but you can't write so clearly that someone won't misunderstand you.

Nice try. But according to your graphs B and C both overlap the temperature trends. It's that +/- 0.2 C again. Which means you can't cite it as evidence against B. And even Hansen (as I quoted above) says only that B is consitent with today's evidence, and acknowledges that the precision is not high enough to definitively say they match.

And of course, all this is taken from the work of climate scientists--skeptics measure no temperatures and write no models. They are parasitic on the actual scientists.

The climate scientitsts have something, but the skeptics have NOTHING. Only FUD.

@tradguy:Gabriel...There are now far more educated scientists that are "Deniers" than there are that are Warmists.

Truth is not up for majority vote, my friend. Again, this tactic is adapted from creationism--get a bunch of credentialed engineers and such to say they doubt something, but ignore the agreement among the people who actually work in that field.

Bullshit. If it's adapted from anything it's adapted from the huge ugly stick of consensus the original subject of this thread and his ilk tried to browbeat everyone on the planet with for damned near 10 years.

Actually, i linked to predictions made in 1998--but you dismiss them in favor of NOTHING. Skeptics do not produce climate models or temperature records. Yet you lend them more weight.

So spare me the science concern trolling. You don't demand anything of the skeptics whose opinions you adopt. But you have a whole other standard fro climate science.

Again, this tactic is adapted from creationism--creationists are allowed to take the Bible as given but they question everything else.

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Ridiculous, sceptics back the null hypothesis, the belief that the two phenomena of CO2 and world average temperatures are not related to any significant degree. There are no climate models needed or possible for such a thing.

Oh, and in case you missed it in my earlier post, here's more up to date info on how far Hansen's perdictions diverge from observed data, and also a look at how recent IPCC predictions are vastly different than Hansen's predictions in 88:

Already addressed. Can you not read the graph? B and C both overlap the observed temperatures, so how can you say B is thereby disproved? You can't, within the margin of error. As Hansen acknowledged and I previouosly quoted.

I said...I didn't see any evidence that they ran a test based on constant CO2 levels, did you??

To which, Gabriel Hanna said...

Done years ago, my friend, before you ever heard the phrase "anthropogenic".

But was such a test done on Hansen's model? The point is to test Hansen's model, not the effect of constant CO2 on the climate. Was there such a test at your link? Or were you just badly missing the point?

Gabriel Hanna wrote:My point is that you cannot say that just because there isn't complete data, or the equations are chaotic, or we've only been watching X years, that prediction is impossible

And it's a trivial point. It may be the case that someone has won a trifecta by selecting horses based on color, but that's not evidence that bays are faster than grays. The AGW hacks may be correct that the global climate will be warmer over the next century, but that doesn't prove or even support the theory. The discovered records of paleoclimate show little evidence of even decades-long stability. Ice core data from Greenland, Siberia and Antarctica show sharp temperature oscillations over the last 50K years with few plateaus lasting as long as a human lifetime. It's perfectly normal for a person to die at 75 or 80 in a climate significantly cooler or warmer than the climate into which he was born. Personally I hope Al Gore is correct when he claims the late 21st century will be warmer than the current climate. Given what can be inferred from the recent past our likely choice is between a return to an ice age (mini or major) and a poorer world, or a climate optimum similar to the early medieval world. Al may be right, but that's not proof of AGW.

Already addressed. Can you not read the graph? B and C both overlap the observed temperatures, so how can you say B is thereby disproved? You can't, within the margin of error. As Hansen acknowledged and I previouosly quoted.

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Wrong. Check the third figure under the James Hansen heading. The observed trends for CO2 follow scenario B while the observed trends for temperature follow scenario C. In other words the observed data disagrees strongly with his model only 20 years out.

Also note the huge divergence between the IPCC's current predictions and Hansen's 1988 scenario. Which one is accurate? They can't both be right.

Ehhhh. It's alright, I guess. Never been a big fan, but I can see why some people like it.

Skepticism is good, unless you're skeptical about things you're not supposed to be skeptical about. Then you become a "skeptic" with quotes around it, because you couldn't possibly disagree in good faith.

I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

"So spare me the science concern trolling. You don't demand anything of the skeptics whose opinions you adopt. But you have a whole other standard fro climate science."

I have the standard that one's claims aren't proven until they're proven. The planetary physicists have proven theirs over and over. Sure, they got off to a bad start with geocentrism and epicycles but through a long, hard slog that took hundreds of years they have earned full trust since then. The climate scientists have not. One ten year blip that kinda sorta falls within one man's prediction is not exactly a towering level of proof for a phenomenon that unrolls over decades, centuries and millennia. And that's my point. The time frame for all this is way too short for any of this to be proven true. There are indications here and there (some contradictory) but that's all they are at this point. It's hubris to pretend it's more than that. It's hubris to pretend that we know more than we know. In 50 years, all this might be proven true (or at least some substantial part of it), but today, no such proof is possible. You can't prove a 50 year prediction in 10 years.

(Whereas, you can prove the feasibility of a three day flight to the moon and a moon landing in three days.)

Wrong. Check the third figure under the James Hansen heading. The observed trends for CO2 follow scenario B while the observed trends for temperature follow scenario C. In other words the observed data disagrees strongly with his model only 20 years out.

Also note the huge divergence between the IPCC's current predictions and Hansen's 1988 scenario. Which one is accurate? They can't both be right.

Try again.

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Crickets.

Claim that opposition has no data to marshall in it's favor, and when the opposition does produce data showing you were 100% wrong, run away.

@Gabriel, I am both a mathematician and a person who does not respect AGW, or anyone who believes in it. Ten or a dozen years ago AGW made a number of testable predictions, including that global temperatures would rise essentially monotonically as CO2 rises, and that we would detect "hot spots" in the atmosphere (among a number of other testable predictions).

None of these predictions have been observed -- global temperatures have been essentially flat for the past decade, and no one has found the predicted "hot spots." The more wild-eyed predictions have been even more strongly debunked -- for instance it was predicted that children in the UK would forget what snow looks like. Last winter the British Isles had periods when nearly every square inch was covered, except for parts of Cornwall. The winter before, the entirety of the British Isles was buried in snow.

So good ol' Al Gore goes on TV and says that all the snow is a direct consequence of global warming. Ah! But snow has a high albedo effect -- it reflects sunlight back into space, thereby cooling the portion of the globe it coveres.

So did AGW overlook feedback cycles that would provide cooling effects to counterbalance warming effects? It appears that way, doesn't it?

Now we're told that the reason why CO2 levels have been rising, thanks mostly to Chinese coal-fired power plants, is that those plants also pollute the air with sulfur dioxide. So the solution for the US, if one believes the latest amendment to AGW, is not to shut down our own coal-fired power plants, but rather to remove the sulfur scubbers.

Getting back to basics, the bottom line is that AGW made a number of predictions. The predictions have not been observed, the theory has been falsified.

Note that this is separate and apart from whether it makes sense to invest in alternate energy sources. The reality that AGW has been falsified does not change the fact that these are good things to do. Just let's not all go crazy, okay?

I said...During this decade, the most likely ( scenario B ) diverged from the actual by ~0.2C. Do you consider that good?

To which Gabriel Hanna said...

It's within the margin of error of the estimate of the trend. We'd still be having this argument if it were 0.02 C or 0.002 C--i kinow that because that is the magnitude of the "urban heat island" which supposedly makes all the calculations worthless.

This is why my test proposed setting the success criteria before performing the test.

But are you really claiming that an error of 0.2C/decade is good, for an effect that is estimated at ~0.3C/decade? Missing by 66% in the first decade, the decade that is likely to be most accurate?

These idiot cocksuckers still can't explain why the 2 mile thick ice sheets that covered much of the northern hemisphere melted 12-14 thousand years ago, nor how they got there that time. Nor can they explain the changes in CO2 and temperature that occurred 200,000 and 400,000 years ago. Nor can they explain how the earth got so cold that the oceans froze nearly solid, twice.

But they sure want to rob us blind. Fuck them and the private jet they rode in on. They seem to have plenty of useful idiots working for them, just based on the communists who comment here.

+/- 0.2 C is far better than the nothing that the skeptics have put out.

I have to disagree with you. In no way is incorrect information better than no information.

The skeptics may not have put out any models or data, but they have clearly show cases where the mainstream climate scientists have gotten things wrong. And that, in and of itself, is of great value.

I chose the name Ignorance is Bliss in part to acknowledge the limitations on my knowledge. I don't claim to know the extent of global warming, or how much man's actions contribute to it. And I find it stunning how many people ( on both sides ) are certain that they know much more than they actually do.

Gabriel is a smart man. But he is not seeing what is in front of his face.

Global cooling is a serious problem right now. The cold fronts came down and made snow accumulations that lasted past July 4th and then released flood waters filling up every reservoir, lake and river front town in sight.

The Cooling is slowing down seed germination until the crops will not get a full growing season in before harvest. Food prices are already skyrocketing.

Droughts exist in spots along with heat spots in June through August , but they were much worse in the 1930s and the 1950s. In Atlanta we had the highest temp ever measured here in July 1952, at 107F. (FYI, we had no AC then.)

The ability of traces of co2 to trap any heat is doubtful at best. And if it were happening, then it would happen first in the upper atmosphere , and it has not happening.

The hockey stick graph is a mythical computer graphic from made from inputting false data to creat a tool to scare children.

The polar bear populations are expanding and have never been endangered. That is another government lie based upon Gorean System Astrology models.

The Himalayan glaciers are growing, not shrinking.

The biggest wild life kill off that we have ever seen was frozen animals down in South America last year.

Poor Gabriel believes in scientist's theories establishing as facts what has not happened.

Other commenters were saying that we can't predict climate because we don't have all the information, or the equations are chaotic, etc, and I was pointing out that this is false, that the same problems exist with the mechanics of the solar system and with the behavior of gases.

And if an astrophysicist told me "see that asteroid? In 100 years that's going to smack into California and kill us all", I wouldn't take HIM seriously either.

I still have the image of Eleanor Clift in my head (not pleasant, for sure) shouting "It's settled science! It's settled science!" on the McLaughlin group some 7-8 years ago. Since then climate science has been quite 'kinetic', to say the least. "It's settled science!" was a cheap way to close off legitimate criticism. What is science without constant questioning and probing?

First of all, it is from 2007. The accuracy of model worsened considerably in the late 00s due to the temperature anomaly of those years (global temperatures cooled for unknown reasons).

Secondly, even if Hansen's model had remained highly accurate up through the present day, that does not reflect on the quality of climate research as a whole. Take economics, for example -- you can look at any five, ten, or twenty-year period of economic performance and find an economist who (a) predicted it and (b) has a model explaining why. It doesn't mean his model is good; it means that there are a lot of economists making a lot of wildly differing predictions, and thus it is guaranteed that one of them will turn out to have guessed right.

Thirdly, the ability to make an accurate five, ten, or twenty-year prediction does not imply the ability to make an accurate fifty or hundred-year prediction. It doesn't even imply the ability to make an accurate 25-year prediction.

Finally, option B on Hansen's chart was the prediction assuming linear growth in concentration of the major greenhouse gasses. Option A assumed exponential growth and predicted more warming. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have grown exponentially since 1984, not linearly (although not at the rate option A used). Thus the actual temperature, per Hansen's model should be *warmer* than option B.

It is my view that the level of certainty expressed in terms of the magnitude of future warming and/or the severity of the consequences of such warming is directly proportional to: Not understanding of the complexity of the problem, political agenda, dishonesty. Or some combination of these three.

People who admit that there is uncertainty are the ones to be trusted.

If you grew up in the South like I did then you are used to seeing characters like Gore. Typically they are preachers on little rundown radio or TV stations who have to really put the fear of God into their flock to get the donations flowing. Mercedes don't buy themselves you know. These guys typically pick on the most ignorant, destitute and desperate.

Gore was kicked out of the seminary... just the most obvious way in which he flunked Christianity. But he gets an A+ for starting his own religion. Anyone who can persuade large numbers of people to eschew the sinful comforts of the modern life so that we can return to the age of sails and watermills (and Gore can add another wing to his mansion by the ocean) is some kind of prophet no doubt. Always with the guilt these prophets.

We can only hope that when he dies he goes to the sort of place he imagines this world to be. That would be the only fitting punishment for this sort of hustler. He would have piles of money with which to fan himself while the world burns around him and his mansion is swallowed by the rising seas.

Dennis Prager said something interesting the other day. He said (paraphrasing), "Don't take advice from experts. Get information from experts."

His point was that for facts and specialized knowledge, experts are a valuable resource. But that doesn't mean they are necessarily the source of good advice or good policy. Often times, they are so immersed in their specific, narrow area of expertise they aren't very good at seeing the big picture, or the balance between competing issues. So use their knowledge, but make up your own mind with a more complete set of information.

James Hansen is probably a prime example of this. He's so immersed in his doom and gloom point of view that, whatever expertise he has, to listen to him on policy is probably a terrible idea. And to employ him as a government scientist when he's that far gone is also probably a poor idea. Technical knowledge does not automatically grant wisdom or perspective.

@rhhardin: You'd have to overcome an explosion of eigenvalues, which doesn't seem likely. It's sort of in the math.

Dude, I know what you mean, and I bet Big Mike does too, but you might as well be speaking Greek to the likes of Roesch-Voltaire and garbage mahal, let alone the earnest English major hippies who want to Save The World.

@Hanna: So spare me the science concern trolling. You don't demand anything of the skeptics whose opinions you adopt. But you have a whole other standard fro climate science.

Fuckin' A right, skippy. The skeptics are not trying to loot trillions of dollars from the pockets of the world's taxpayers, and dictate the most trivial details of how we live our lives. The warmist conspiracy is. I'm going to attack them as hard as I can, because if they win, the world will be an impoverished gulag.

I believe that even if every word of Al Gore's cockamamie rantings were true, it is still the case that there is an infestation of communist fellow travelers in his train who intend to use the issue as a Trojan horse to steal away my money and civil rights for their own ideological ends. These are among the most evil people in the entire world, and I look forward to the day when they are hunted by mobs and crucified at crossroads.

Climate science, specifically global warming alarmism, on the other hand, is like antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea. It can be avoided through good hygiene, but too many scientifically promiscuous people catch it and can't seem to get rid of it. It even seems to go to your brain like syphilis.